October, 20 2023, 10:20am EDT
Heat alerts issued in counties across the U.S. from May through September expose the magnitude of danger workers face
Ninety-five percent of counties in the United States faced alerts from the National Weather Service (NWS) from May to September, 2023, according to a new map released today by Public Citizen.
The sweeping scale of excessive heat alerts issued across the U.S. from reveal the dire nationwide need to safeguard workers from heat-related illness, injury, and death. As the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) continues to consider rules to protect workers from excessive heat, individual workers lack protections from workplaces that have yet to adapt to the nationwide epidemic of extreme heat .
“National Weather Service heat alerts broadcast the critical need to exercise simple safety precautions — reducing strenuous activities, taking refuge from the sun, drinking plenty of water, and using air-conditioning or fans,” said Dr. Juley Fulcher, health and safety advocate with Public Citizen’s Congress Watch. “But employers dictate whether workers can take these life-saving measures. An OSHA safety rule is essential ensure workers are protected.”
The National Weather Service issues alerts when the heat index is expected to reach or exceed 100ºF, with some variability based on local temperature norms. These high temperatures place serious limits on the body’s ability to cool itself, leading to a breakdown of the systems that keep us alive.
Nearly 800 counties across 16 states were under extreme heat alerts for more than a month between May and September, 2023, with seven states enduring more than two months of nearly unlivable temperatures. From coast to coast, 1,100 counties suffered through more than three weeks of deadly heat. Portions of every state in the continental U.S. were under at least a full week of heat alerts.
OSHA began developing a heat standard in 2021, but the statute-driven process takes an average of seven to eight years. Congress has the power to speed up that process. In July 2023, Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), Bobby Scott (D-Va.), Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), and Alma Adams (D-N.C.), reintroduced the Asuncíon Valdivia Heat Illness, Injury and Fatality Prevention Act, legislation that, if passed, would direct OSHA to issue an interim heat standard until a final standard can be completed.
“Our map of extreme heat alerts faced by the vast majority of workers in 2023 is a warning of the the deadly conditions workers will confront in 2024,” said Fulcher. “We must have an OSHA heat standard in place before next summer. Congress must act immediately to ensure employers provide commonsense protections for workers.”
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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FTC Chair Lina Khan Should Take Jim Cramer's 'Unhinged' Obsession as 'Badge of Honor'
A spokesperson for the American Economic Liberties Project called the CNBC host a "mouthpiece and cheerleader for monopolists across the economy."
May 14, 2024
The American Economic Liberties Project on Monday called outCNBC's Jim Cramer for at least dozens of "hostile" televised attacks on Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan and her "historic pro-working families record."
The left-leaning group has been compiling Cramer's "most egregious on-air outbursts" over Khan since early last year and its tracker now features more than 30 clips from "Mad Money" and "Squawk on the Street."
When President Joe Biden nominated Khan to lead the FTC in 2021, she was an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School who had previously worked for the Open Markets Institute, the office of former Commissioner Rohit Chopra, and the U.S. House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law.
As the clips collected by the project show, Cramer has described Khan as an "empty suit," "stupid," and a "total hack." The ex-hedge fund manager has also compared the agency leader's views to those of Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, and Don Quixote.
Cramer has called out specific FTC actions under Khan—repeatedly blasting a lawsuit against Amazon, a company founded by one of the richest persons on the planet—and broadly accused the "rogue" agency of "torturing all the companies that America likes."
When one of Cramer's colleagues pointed out last October that he has taken "every opportunity to just come back to Khan," he responded, "No, I've missed opportunities and I regret that."
The tracker page states that "if Cramer was accurately reporting what the FTC is doing, he would see that Chair Khan is pursuing a pro-business, pro-innovation, and pro-worker agenda. And he is capable of it: he did, for example, proclaim the FTC's case against Kroger-Albertsons to be strong."
Noting Cramer's praise for Jonathan Kanter, an assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice whom the host has called a "heavyweight" and "rigorous thinker," the page adds that "he is so blinded by his obsession of Chair Khan that he sometimes even rails against her for suits brought by the DOJ and forgets to give the Antitrust Division credit for its work."
American Economic Liberties Project spokesperson Jimmy Wyderko said in a statement Monday that "Jim Cramer's anger over the FTC's enforcement record has turned into a full-blown obsession, launching nearly weekly barbs at Chair Khan with the zeal of a carnival barker defending his turf."
"This has manifested on national cable news through a series of unhinged, incoherent, and often inaccurate rants from Jim Cramer attacking the FTC for standing up to big corporations and delivering kitchen table wins to working families," he continued.
"Given Jim Cramer's role as mouthpiece and cheerleader for monopolists across the economy, Chair Khan should consider his harassment a badge of honor," Wyderko added. "We hope to see Jim Cramer get over his fixation syndrome, which is evidently even starting to frustrate his colleagues, as soon as he is able."
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'A War Crime': Rights Group Details Israel's Use of Children as Human Shields
"Israeli treatment of Palestinian children, the way they see them as well as how they abuse their bodies, is genocidal," said one journalist.
May 14, 2024
Israeli and U.S. claims that civilian casualties in Gaza are the result of Hamas' use of "human shields" have figured prominently in Israel's defense of the skyrocketing death toll in the enclave, but a report by a local independent human rights group details the recent experiences of three boys in the West Bank, who say they were used to shield Israeli forces from potential harm during their raid on a refugee camp.
Defense for Children International - Palestine (DCIP) on Monday released its interviews with three boys in Tulkarem refugee camp, which was attacked by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on May 6.
The three boys—Karam, 13; Mohammad, 12; and Ibrahim, 14—gave nearly identical accounts of being forced to walk ahead of the IDF soldiers as they raided residential buildings, ensuring they would be attacked by any armed people instead of the Israeli forces.
The soldiers also positioned their guns on the shoulders of two of the boys before firing the weapons, and subjected all of them to beatings.
Karam told DCIP that about 30 IDF soldiers entered his family's apartment with a "huge military dog" during the Tulkarem attack and isolated his family in one room, selecting Karam to come with them as they raided the rest of the building.
The "forced Karam to walk in front of them, open the doors to each room, and enter it before them," DCIP reported. "While they were walking, one soldier placed his rifle on Karam's right shoulder and fired two shots toward an apartment in the building."
Mohammad told the group the IDF soldiers ignored his mother's pleas as they ordered his family to leave his apartment, keeping Mohammad with them.
"I was left alone with the soldiers after they ordered my mother and siblings to go up to the fourth floor of the building. I started crying and shaking in fear because I did not know what they would do to me. They were armed, masked, and had frightening appearances. They had a huge military dog that made terrifying sounds," Mohammad told DCIP.
"After that, the soldiers told me to knock on the doors of the apartments in the building, while they were standing behind me at a fairly short distance, and to ask the residents to come out, and this is what I did," he said. "When we reached the door of one of the apartments, there was no one inside, so the soldiers blew up the door and forced me to go inside alone and check and search it. After I told them that it was empty, they entered it, while I remained held by one of the soldiers at the door."
Ibrahim was forced to walk in front of the soldiers after they interrogated him about "the whereabouts of wanted men," slapped and kicked him, and cuffed his hands behind his back with a plastic tie.
"At first, I thought they wanted to arrest me, but they told me to walk in front of them in the alleys of the Sawalma neighborhood in the camp," said Ibrahim. "They would hide in the alleys and tell me to see if there was anyone around. After that, they untied my hands, and whenever we passed a house or building, they would instruct me to enter and ask the residents to come out. Then they would raid those houses and tell me to open the doors into different rooms."
DCIP's report, saidAl Jazeera journalist Sana Saeed, indicates how "every Palestinian child is seen as a threat, as disposable," by the IDF and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.
"Israeli treatment of Palestinian children, the way they see them as well as how they abuse their bodies, is genocidal," said Saeed.
As Ben Burgis wrote at Jacobin in November, "accusations that [Hamas fighters] 'use civilians as human shields' rarely seem to be meant quite so literally" as reports of the IDF's practices. "More often, what the accusation amounts to is simply that Hamas fighters and military equipment—or sometimes even just people linked to Hamas' political wing—tend to be located in areas with lots of civilians."
But as in the cases of the three boys at Tulkarem, "there is extensive evidence of the IDF quite literally engaging in human shielding—forcing Palestinian civilians to approach houses for them because they'll be less likely to be shot at than Israeli soldiers, for example," wrote Burgis.
"Israel's High Court banned the practice in 2005, but Israeli human rights group B'Tselem reports that 'soldiers continue to occasionally use Palestinians as human shields even after the court ruling, especially during military operations,'" he added.
Ayed Abu Eqtaish, the accountability program director at DCIP, condemned the IDF practices described by Karam, Mohammad, and Ibrahim.
"International law is explicit and absolutely prohibits the use of children as human shields by armed forces or armed groups," said Abu Eqtaish. "Israeli forces intentionally putting a child in grave danger in order to shield themselves constitutes a war crime."
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Extreme Flooding Kills Hundreds in Climate-Vulnerable Afghanistan
"This is a subsistence agriculture community and society. So, they're bearing the brunt of it, without having necessarily contributed to the issue very much," one aid worker said.
May 14, 2024
Severe flooding in Afghanistan over the weekend has killed more than 300 people and destroyed thousands of homes in rural villages.
The flash floods—prompted by heavy rainfall—came on the heels of an extreme drought in one of the nations that is most vulnerable to the climate emergency, yet has done little to contribute to it.
"They're not net emitters of carbon," Timothy Anderson, head of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) in Afghanistan, toldCNN. "This is a subsistence agriculture community and society. So, they're bearing the brunt of it, without having necessarily contributed to the issue very much."
"How many more tragedies must happen for the world to prioritize climate action?"
The rain and flooding inundated 21 districts in the northeastern provinces of Badakhshan, Baghlan, Takhar on Friday and Saturday, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The extent of the flooding caught many villagers by surprise.
In Folo in Bulka district of Baghlan province, the rain began during Friday prayers, softly at first, and then quickly building in intensity.
Resident Barakatullah told CNN that it does not often rain so high up in the mountains and that villagers had to scramble as the situation "turned dire."
"People fled to higher ground, seeking refuge in mountains and hills," he said. "Unfortunately, some individuals who were unable to leave their homes fell victim to the floodwaters."
The WFP toldThe Associated Press that more than 300 were killed, and the U.N. Children's Fund reported that at least 51 of them were children. The government said Sunday that the storms killed 315 and injured more than 1,600.
The survivors were left to bury the dead and tally their losses. All told, the disaster destroyed or damaged 8,975 homes, according to OCHA. In Baghlan province alone, the floods washed away at least six public schools, 10,200 acres of orchards, and 2,260 livestock and damaged 50 bridges and 30 hydroelectric dams.
"Lives and livelihoods have been washed away," Arshad Malik, the Afghanistan director for Save the Children, told Reuters. "The flash floods tore through villages, sweeping away homes, and killing livestock."
Farmer Abdul Ghani told the AP that he was visiting family in another province when he learned of the floods. Rushing home to the Nahrin district in Baghlan province, he found the road he usually took to his village erased, his wife and three of his children dead, and another child missing.
"My life has turned into a disaster," he said.
Muhammad Yahqoob, who lives in the same district and lost 13 family members, told Reuters, "We have no food, no drinking water, no shelter, no blankets, nothing at all, floods have destroyed everything."
He added that out of 42 houses that used to stand in his village, only two or three were left.
"It has destroyed the entire valley," Yahqoob said.
Anderson of the WFP told CNN that losing livestock for many villagers meant losing all or part of their livelihoods. Further, the flooding disrupted the lives of people who were already struggling due to drought and destroyed measures they had taken to adapt, such as dams for rainwater and irrigation canals.
"It was already pretty grim. And now it's catastrophic," he told CNN.
The current disaster also follows rains and flooding in April that killed 70 and destroyed around 2,000 homes in southern and western provinces, according to AP.
The U.N. lists Afghanistan as one of the countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis, and it also lost a signficant amount of foreign aid when the Taliban took control in 2021. The aid has only decreased in the years since.
While decades of war means that Afghanistan faces unique challenges, it's not the only country that has been inundated with severe rain since the start of 2024. Extreme flooding this spring has displaced nearly a quarter million people in East Africa and half a million in southern Brazil.
"The climate crisis continues to rear its ugly head," Teresa Anderson, the global climate justice lead at ActionAid International, said in a statement. "With the latest incident, Afghanistan joins a long list of Global South countries grappling with floods this year. And this is as the world continues funding the climate crisis by expanding fossil fuels and industrial agriculture."
"How many more tragedies must happen for the world to prioritize climate action?" Anderson asked. "It's time to back climate action with the necessary climate funding. Communities, like those in Afghanistan, need this money to build resilience to climate impacts and pay for the losses and damages already caused by the climate crisis."
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